Verse Drama After Shakespeare: Writing Poetic Plays Today
Calling poets, playwrights, and Shakespeare-lovers! Join The Poetry School for an exciting exploration of verse drama and learn how to use these techniques in poetic and theatrical writing.
In this workshop with poet and verse dramatist Richard O’Brien, (a recent Teaching Fellow in Shakespeare and Creativity at The Shakespeare Institute), participants will learn techniques for writing verse that is dramatically effective onstage, while playwrights can explore ways to incorporate the power of poetic language and structure into their scripts.
Over the day attendees will develop a sense of Shakespearean dramatic construction, alongside more recent verse dramas drawing on the same techniques, to gain new creative pathways into these familiar texts. Participants will experiment with techniques combining drama and poetry, including shared/split/stolen lines, revelatory soliloquy, and direct address; exercises will consider the contributions made by metrical regularity and deviation to a scene’s tone, energy, and shape. Participants will be supported to play with this dialectic in your own writing and take home at least two scripted scenes for future development.
